


can't buy me love

by jilliancares



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Basically, Ice Cream, M/M, Summer Love, and keith works at an auto-repair store, lance is an ice cream truck driver, lance's ice cream truck is old and shitty, oh and keith has a motorcycle, this fic is just full of Summer Vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 04:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilliancares/pseuds/jilliancares
Summary: “Just because your teeth can’t handle doing what they’re supposed to —”“They’re not supposed to! Popsicles aren’t meant to be bitten!”“All food’s meant to be bitten!” Keith argued, which was absolutely wrong (uh, ever heard ofsoup?) but still entirely too fun to argue about.Or:In which Lance is an ice cream truck driver desperate to find love and Keith is a car mechanic who fixes up Lance's truck better than anyone else ever has.





	can't buy me love

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for the wonderful @haleykynz on tumblr!!! it was her birthday three days ago, aka this fic is three days late, but it's also three times longer than intended so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> also, this story is vaguely based off how my grandparents got together. lance's grandfather's love story is basically theirs, so there's that
> 
> oh and i'm simultaneously sorry and not sorry for the cheesy ending lmao

It was scorching hot out, which wasn’t entirely uncommon for April, but was out of the ordinary enough that Lance felt indignant over its occurrence.

He should probably be ecstatic over the heat — after all, the hotter the weather the more people were in need of ice cream — but he’d prefer a slower, cooler day rather than a boiling, hectic one. Not to mention the fact that his truck had shitty air conditioning. You’d think having a bunch of freezers would do a good job of cooling down the interior, but they did absolutely nothing. Lance was pretty sure they _produced_  heat, probably from all the work they had to do to actually keep their insides cool.

As it was, Lance found himself driving around the familiar neighborhoods of his small town, his windows rolled all the way down in an attempt to get the air moving around him as his truck blasted the ice cream truck music. He saw plenty of familiar faces, the same groups of kids who often played outside when Lance drove by running to his truck for cold treats. They smiled and shouted and shoved dollar bills at him, crushed in their fists as they scrambled for extra change in their pockets.

It was a small enough town that Lance could confidently recognize the majority of the people who stopped him for ice cream, plenty of them by name. He could hardly run out to the grocery store at this point without being recognized by a handful of people as the ice cream truck man.

“Lance! Lance!” a little boy — Aaron — said, clinging to the metal edge of the window as he waited for Lance to grab his push pop. “I lost a tooth! _Look_!”

Now holding the grape flavored popsicle in hand, Lance leaned in close and widened his eyes with a gasp. “No way!” he exclaimed. “Did you put it under your pillow?”

Aaron smiled proudly. “Yep,” he said happily. “I just bought my popsicle with my Tooth Fairy money!”

Lance grinned, handing over the treat after congratulating Aaron on his lost tooth, before making his way back to the front of the truck and settling into the worn leather seat. The air conditioning felt like it was blowing hot air, despite having been on for the entire route so far in an attempt to “warm up”, but Lance finally shut it off, figuring he was just wasting gas at that point.

Really, he loved his ice cream truck. Sure, it was fun to complain about it and grouch to his friends, having told Hunk and Pidge hundreds of different ice cream related horror stories, but he wouldn’t trade his baby for the world. It’d been his _abuelo’s_  truck, which meant it was a scarily old model and ended up limping to the auto-repair store more often than not.

His parents hadn’t wanted to get rid of the truck after Lance’s _abuelo_  had passed — partially due to memories and nostalgia and partially due to the fact that few people would want to pay for this hunk of junk — which meant it was still hanging around in the garage by the time Lance was old enough to drive. At sixteen, he’d spent all his savings on ice cream, a vending license, and whatever he could afford to fix within the truck (the freezers, the engine, the brakes, and sadly not the air conditioning).

Now, at twenty years old and spending his days eating and selling ice cream around town, Lance figured he was living the dream. He picked up side jobs in the colder months, of course, seeing as not many people were in the mood for a cold treat on an even colder day, but even that was something Lance enjoyed. Really, now he was just hoping he could follow in his _abuelo’s_  footsteps.

When his _abuelo_  was his age, he’d had the entire town in love with him and his ice cream truck. He’d driven his routes and waved at everyone on the streets, strangers-turned-friends waving him over even when they didn’t have any money for an ice cream cone, simply because they wanted to say hello.

It’d been in this truck that his _abuelo_  had first met the love of his life. She’d watched him drive by, the now-outdated ice cream truck music playing, and she’d ran after him, one hand shoved in her pocket for loose change as the other waved through the air.

Over the next few weeks, the woman that was Lance’s _abuela_  had continued to stop to buy ice cream, and his abuelo had fallen in love with her. He’d stopped charging her for the ice cream, and she’d started joining him on his routes, keeping him company and falling in love with him as she did.

Lance thought it was the most romantic thing he’d ever heard. He planned to meet his spouse the exact same way.

“Oh shit,” Lance huffed as the truck wobbled ominously, followed by a loud clunk and a groan, a cloud of black smoke puffing out behind him. He pulled over just in time for the engine to give out, the truck becoming horribly quiet as the whirring of the freezers behind him turned to silence. When his truck was in working order, the freezers continued to run even when the truck was off, which certainly didn’t bode well now.

Dammit. He’d definitely be earning a deficit today. He’d have to replace all the ice cream that would surely melt by the time he got it to the repair shop, and that was just an additional cost on top of the actual repairs. And the tow truck.

Lance was out of the truck and on his phone in minutes, the inside of the truck quickly climbing to _sweltering_ , his white t-shirt sticking grossly to his back.

“Tom’s Towing Company, this is Jared, how can we help you?” a bored sounding voice said.

“Jared!” Lance said brightly. “My dude, my buddy, my man! How are you doing?”

“Jesus Christ, Lance — don’t tell me your stupid ice cream truck broke down again?”

Lance gasped, a hand pressed dramatically to his chest despite Jared not being around to see it. He could use his imagination. “Don’t you dare say that about my darling Blue,” Lance said, and Jared groaned into his end of the receiver.

“Just buy a new one, Lance!” he insisted. “I swear to God, half our income comes from you. You could save yourself so much money.”

“And let Tom’s Towing Company go under? I could never,” Lance said dramatically, and Jared huffed.

“Just tell me which street you’re on. Someone’ll be there to get you in ten.”

“They’ll let me hop in the passenger seat, right?” Lance said hopefully. “I really can’t afford to call a cab as well.”

“Lance, everyone here knows you,” Jared said. “I doubt anyone would say no to you catching a ride.”

Ten minutes later, a familiar older man was pulling up and attaching Lance’s truck to his. He, too, tried to convince Lance to buy a new truck, but Lance shook his head stubbornly. There was more to Blue than her shoddy inner-mechanisms seemed to suggest. She contained _history_. And there had to be something magical about the place where two people had fallen in love, okay?

It wasn’t long before Lance was standing beside his ice cream truck in the familiar interior of Shiro’s garage, smiling sheepishly as Shiro rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, and Lance threw his arms up in the air.

“It’s not like I _chose_  to break her!” he complained, and Shiro just shook his head, wiping his oily hands on an already dirty rag before throwing it over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked, coming to stop with his hands on his hips next to Lance.

“Um… There was smoke,” Lance said, lifting up a finger. “And the engine shut off after I pulled over. And it was making this groaning sound, kind of like ‘ERRNG —’”

Shiro cut him off. “I don’t need an example.”

“You sure? Because I was practicing before the tow truck got there. I think I have the sound pretty spot-on.”

“I believe you,” Shiro said. “Just let me fix your truck. I can’t believe it passed inspection.”

“You’re the one that inspected it,” Lance said with a shrug, a smirk curling his lips. Shiro sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was already smudged black, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d touched his dirty fingers to that area today.

“I don’t know how you do it…”

“Lots of ice cream, lots of bribes,” Lance said cheerily. “Speaking of — any way I can get a frequent customer discount?”

“That’s not a thing and you know it.”

“Ah, but it _should_  be,” Lance said wisely. “I’ll throw in an entire box of ice cream. It’s about to go bad in my truck, anyway.”

Shiro pursed his lips, his resolve breaking right before Lance’s eyes. He was one of the biggest sweet-tooths Lance had ever seen, and he had no problem exploiting it. “Fine,” Shiro finally huffed, looking disappointed in himself the second the word left his mouth. “But I’m getting my brother to work on your truck. I just got him to start working at the shop with me, and the sooner he becomes familiar with that piece of junk, the better.”

“Excuse me!” Lance said, offended. “She can _hear_  you!”

Shiro rolled his eyes, but the quirk of his lip spoke of how he really felt in Lance’s presence. Honored. Amused. _Enlightened._

Alright, so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but whatever. Lance yanked open the rear doors of his truck and coughed at the wave of heat that encased him, stumbling towards a freezer and pulling it open. The inside was still nice and cool, the insulation doing a good job of keeping the heat out, but it wouldn’t last for much longer. Lance heaved one of the bigger boxes of ice cream into his arms, still unopened, and kicked the fridge shut behind him, jumping down from his truck and making his way down the familiar path towards the employees’ only room of the auto-shop, which harbored the fridge and freezer.

He greeted a few of the employees inside by name, each of them looking amused and unsurprised at his presence. A few called out for ice cream, and Lance ripped open the box, throwing their requests their way before shoving it deep into their freezer and forcing the door shut behind it.

By the time he made it back to his truck, Shiro was nowhere in sight and Lance had nowhere to go. He didn’t feel like walking home in the still-climbing heat in the middle of the day, and he wasn’t about to waste more money to catch a ride, which meant waiting around and hoping Blue would be all patched up by the time the garage was closed.

Lance huffed, missing the chill of the ice cream box in his arms and against his chest, and took a seat on the back of his truck to wait for someone to come talk to him about the repairs.

“Woah!” someone shouted just as Lance sat, and he jumped back to his feet with wide eyes as someone came rolling out from under his truck on one of those rolling-under-car inventions.

“Holy shit!” Lance said, his hands raised before himself half in surrender and half in defense as the man sat up, glaring at him. “I’m sorry!” Lance said quickly. “I didn’t know you were under there!”

“My feet were sticking out!” the man snapped, gesturing at them angrily, and Lance gaped at him, his mouth opening and closing a few times like a fish.

“Um — I can give you ice cream?”

“What?” the man, who must’ve been Shiro’s brother now that Lance thought about it, except they didn’t really look very much alike, said. His voice sounded bland and annoyed, obviously fed up with Lance already. Absently, Lance tried to convince himself that it was just the heat. Weather this hot could make anyone grouchy.

“Yeah,” Lance said emphatically, picking up momentum with his idea despite the man’s reaction having done nothing to show any sort of excitement towards the idea. “On the house!” Lance insisted. “An apology. What d’you like? Chocolate? Vanilla? You one of those weird strawberry people?”

“I’m lactose intolerant,” the man deadpanned. He was still glaring at Lance, still looking as if he wanted nothing to do with him. It didn’t help that he looked like the actual definition of _gorgeous_. Even with sweat shining on his forehead and around the collar of his shirt, even with his hair pushed back messily with a red bandana, he was devastatingly attractive. Even glaring at Lance like he wouldn’t mind if the truck started rolling backward and crushed him.

“Not a problem!” Lance said, recovering quickly. He jumped into the truck, more out of desire to stop staring helplessly at the hot guy before him than excitement to provide him with ice cream. He dug through a different freezer, this one full of different flavored popsicles, and pulled out a red one, thankfully yet to melt.

Lance hopped back out of the truck, the vehicle bouncing as his weight left it, and he spun towards the other man and presented the popsicle grandly. “Here,” he said, shoving the treat directly into his hand and taking a step back. “Consider it an apology for almost crushing you under my truck.”

“You couldn’t have crushed me,” the man said, still in that flat and un-interesting sounding voice, except he opened the popsicle and tossed the rapper aside, immediately sticking the treat in his mouth. And then, like an actual, terrifying alien, he bit it.

Lance had to resist the urge to gape as the man chewed, neither blinking nor shuddering nor doing _anything_  to suggest that biting directly into a cold popsicle had hurt his teeth in any way.

“I’m Lance, by the way,” Lance added hurriedly, in an attempt to distract himself from the man before him taking _another_  bite of the popsicle. Seriously, who the fuck ate popsicles like that?! “Owner of this truck, frequenter of this garage,” Lance added.

“Yeah, Shiro said,” the man before him nodded. He finished the popsicle in another bite, paused to lick a dot of red off his thumb where the popsicle had dripped, and tossed the wooden stick onto the wrapper before looking back up at Lance. “You might want to consider getting a new one, if it breaks down that often,” he said, looking up at Lance seriously. And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “I’m Keith, by the way.”

“I’m not buying a new truck,” Lance said stubbornly, crossing his arms. He jutted his lip out, after a moment. “How long until it’s done, do you think?”

“There’s a lot of shit wrong with it,” Keith said lightly, as if those words weren’t adding weights to Lance’s stomach. “So probably a couple hours. You can come back and pick it up tomorrow, if you want.”

Lance nodded despite the fact that he’d been planning to stay here and wait. It was hard to think straight when he was looking at a gorgeous man in front of him, and he found himself willing to agree with anything he said. Keith could tell him that the sky was green and that it rained boiling rocks, and Lance would just nod in agreement.

“All right,” Lance said. “Well, feel free to help yourself to more popsicles. They’re all gonna melt in there, anyway.”

Keith’s eyes brightened, though it seemed like he was fighting to keep his expression neutral. Maybe he had as bad of a sweet-tooth as Shiro.

“Thanks,” he said simply, and Lance nodded, offering him a wave as he strode towards the exit of the garage, apparently about to walk home in ninety-degree heat. Just before stepping out of the humid-but-shaded garage, he turned around and looked back to his truck, just in time to see Keith jumping out of it with a second red popsicle in hand.

Somehow, Lance found himself walking home with a smile on his face, one that couldn’t seem to be melted by the heat.

—

“I”m telling you, Hunk,” Lance said dramatically, hanging over the edge of his friend’s couch with a leg thrown over the back of it. “I’m _doomed_.”

“I don’t follow,” Hunk said, back turned to Lance as he made something delicious-smelling at the counter. “Your truck’s managed to not break down for three entire weeks — a _record_ , might I remind you — and you’re upset about this?”

Lance sniffed loudly. “ _Yes_ ,” he whined. “If Blue doesn’t break down soon, when will I ever get the chance to see Keith again?”

“Sounds gay,” Pidge informed, the door to Hunk’s apartment banging open as she barged in, holding a popsicle. Lance immediately sat up, glaring at her.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded, and Pidge froze, her eyes sliding slowly from Hunk to Lance.

“The store?” she said unconvincingly. Her lips were stained green.

“Did you break into my truck?!” Lance screeched, jumping to his feet and throwing his arms in the air. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, but Lance had reprimanded her time and time again — he needed his wares for _selling_. Also, he had no clue how she was breaking into his truck, and he’d really like to find out so he could prevent it from happening by people who weren’t his friends.

“I would never!” Pidge said, before shoving the popsicle back into her mouth and walking past him, looking way too smug.

“I fucking hate you,” Lance said, and Pidge shrugged uncaringly.

“I left a tip on the counter,” she said, popping the popsicle out of her mouth to point it towards the counter where Hunk was constructing their dinner. “That smells amazing.”

“Thank you,” Hunk said.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Lance said. “No you didn’t, you liar!”

“You’re right,” Pidge said. “But you owe me. I fixed your sound system, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Lance huffed, crossing his arms to glare at his horrible friend. “I remember because you’ve been reminding me every time you steal my shit for the past _three months_.”

“I think we should concentrate on the real issue here,” Pidge said, pointing her popsicle at Lance and looking at him dramatically. “Keith. How the hell are you ever going to see Keith again?”

Lance, 100% distracted, plopped back down on the couch and shoved his hands into his hair. “I don’t _know_ ,” he moaned. “Maybe I should slash a tire or something. Tow myself back to the garage. That would work, right?”

“Please don’t break your own truck,” Hunk begged, abandoning their dinner in order to turn around to look at Lance pleadingly. “Seriously, I think Blue might actually be in good condition right now. Don’t ruin his for her.”

“ _She’s_  ruining this for _me_ ,” Lance said grumpily, though of course he didn’t really mean that. He loved Blue, he did, he just couldn’t believe that she’d chosen _now_  to stop sending him back to Shiro’s garage every other week.

“Maybe it’s fate,” Pidge suggested. “You’re supposed to meet them just like your _abuelo_ , right? Well, you didn’t meet Keith that way.”

Lance bit his lip. He _had_  always imagined following exactly in his _abuelo’s_  footsteps, leaning out the ice cream truck window and grinning flirtily down at whoever was out there. And then, after a time or two of them being a repeat customer, he’d offer them their usual for free. And then he’d get them into his truck, get them to drive his route with him. He might even get his air conditioning fixed, if it meant he’d be able to keep them around.

Except…

Well, maybe he didn’t have to meet his true love that exact same way. The truck was the key part, right? It’d already gotten him to Keith, already had them meet. In _fact_ , Lance had already skipped the first step! He’d gone right past the regular customer part and already given him ice cream for free! Surely this meant something?

Or maybe he was just pinning all his hopes and dreams of an epic love story on one attractive guy he’d had the pleasure of meeting.

“I’m _doomed_ ,” Lance complained, groaning as he threw himself back on the couch. “I’m never gonna see him again!”

Hunk and Pidge ignored him, going back to whatever tasks they felt like accomplishing in the kitchen, knowing Lance would get over his complaining given enough time.

—

Driving around the small town could definitely get a bit boring and tedious when Lance was on his own. Some days, he managed to convince Hunk or Pidge to accompany him, which always made for a fun day of work, but they didn’t want to join him nearly as often as he tried to invite them along.

Being alone was especially boring when the radio was on the fritz again. His radio was something that only worked on good days. It depended on a whole bunch of variables, although it seemed to work the most reliably when Lance drove with one hand on the wheel, the other pressing the radio into the dashboard. Because of this, Lance had ended up taping it in place, hoping that’d be pressure enough to keep the radio working at all times, but it wasn’t quite working out for him.

Bored and without anything to sing along to, Lance was close to driving on over to Shiro’s garage to hand over some cash and have his radio be fixed for good, but he managed to hold back. However strongly he wanted to see Keith — which was really, _really_  strongly — having a faulty radio really wasn’t something he could afford to blow money on right now. He just knew he’d be regretting it when a week from then, probably as karma for wasting his money to blast some good tunes, his car broke down while he didn’t have sufficient funds to repair it.

Thus the reason why Lance was driving around grumpily, unable to drown out the incessant sound of his ice cream music siren, which he had started humming along to in absolute boredom. Humming evolved into singing, though the song didn’t actually have any words, which meant Lance just kept repeating, “ice cream, ice cream, ice cream,” to the tune.

Honestly, Lance was just kind of desperate to finish up. He wanted to do maybe another lap or two of the neighborhoods and head home early for the day, wanting to just lay in bed on his laptop. His lack of fun had grown so drastic that he’d come close to breaking into his own merchandise a few times.

At that point, he wasn’t really looking for something to cheer him up or turn his day around. He was just trying to do his job and head home after making a few more sales, except he got what he hadn’t been expecting.

It was as he was lazily driving past a quiet street in downtown. He glanced out the window towards the only pedestrian he could see, who didn’t even turn his head at the sound of the ice cream jingle playing. But Lance’s glance turned into a stare which turned into a gape as he realized exactly who he was looking at.

Keith had his hair pulled into a bun at the back of his head, and he was wearing one of those muscle shirts that was open on the sides, showing off plenty of his ribs. His head was bent as he walked, paying attention solely to the phone in his hand, but Lance didn’t care. He pulled the truck over to the curb, threw it in park, and jumped to his feet, shoving the service window open.

“ _Keith_!” Lance yelled, leaning out the window in his excitement. Keith jumped about ten feet in the air in surprise, a hand flying up to his heart as he turned to face Lance in surprise.

“Lance?” he said, sounding confused and struggling to speak over the ruckus of the truck’s music. Lance leaned to the side and flicked off the music, the abrupt silence leaving his ears ringing. “What are you doing?”

“I know a face desperate for ice cream when I see one,” Lance said, gesturing at Keith’s bored-looking expression. “And _that_  is one ice cream craving face.”

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Keith said, and Lance rolled his eyes.

“Ice cream, popsicles — same thing! Come on, what can I get ya?”

Lance knew Keith was obsessed with his popsicles. Like, _really_  obsessed. After leaving his truck at the shop overnight, he’d come back to several boxes of melted and dripping ice cream. He’d also found the little trashcan nailed to the floor filled with wrappers and wooden sticks, each of them coated with a sticky red inside. Yes, Keith had taken Lance’s offer to eat whatever he wanted to heart. He must’ve snacked on them throughout the entire time he’d fixed Lance’s truck. Maybe that was why it’d been running so smoothly for so long now — Keith had taken his time in order to consume more popsicles.

“I don’t have any money on me right now,” Keith said, but his lip pouted out into the littlest of frowns, as if he really did want one, and bad.

Lance folded one arm along the window, propping his other elbow on the shelf and placing his chin in his hand. “How about this,” Lance said, opening his hand and wiggling his fingers at Keith to prove that this plan was definitely a grand one. “You can hop in and keep me company for the rest of my route, and you can eat however many popsicles while you do.”

Keith’s eyes widened as he seemed to weigh the pros and cons in his mind. Finally, he said, “Are you that desperate for company?”

Lance didn’t know whether to be offended or not. “My radio’s broken,” he said as an answer. “I don’t know if desperate’s a strong enough word.”

Keith laughed, thankfully, and he opened the back of Lance’s truck like he was familiar with it and swung himself in. He ducked towards the freezer with the popsicles once he was inside, already apparently at home in Lance’s truck, and plopped himself down in the passenger seat patiently, glancing towards Lance as he ripped the popsicle open and took a bite.

Trying to tamp down his grin, Lance slammed the service window shut and jumped back into the worn driver’s seat, putting the truck in drive and peeling away from the curb, the wind blowing pleasantly through the rolled down windows.

“Do you do this every day?” Keith asked, looking out the window and back at Lance as he crossed his legs under him on the seat. And Jesus Christ, that was fucking adorable! He couldn’t just _do_  that — didn’t he know he was giving Lance heart palpations?

Managing to get himself under control, Lance nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, if it’s raining or weirdly cold out, I’ll usually just stay home — not worth the waste of gas, you know? — but other than that, people are always wanting ice cream. At least during the warm months.”

Keith nodded, shoving the last bite of popsicle in his mouth just as the truck when over a pothole, the radio randomly spluttering to life at much too loud a volume. Lance swerved, surprised, and he reached out and twisted the volume down in a panic, trying to be gentle enough that he wouldn’t somehow shut the radio back off again.

With the radio at a normal volume and still working, Lance laughed triumphantly. _“Wa-hoo-hoo!”_  he cheered, chancing a glance away from the road to instead grin broadly at Keith. “We are _back_ , baby!”

“You should really get that fixed,” Keith said, leaning in and peering at the radio, as if by staring hard enough he could figure out the problem.

“Nah,” Lance said. “I gotta save my money for the real problems, you know?”

“I could probably fix it for you, sometime,” Keith said, almost absent-mindedly. When Lance looked over at him, surprised, it was to find Keith pink-cheeked and staring out the front window. “I mean,” he continued, waving his hand a bit flippantly. “It’s probably just a fault wire or something.”

Despite Keith’s clear embarrassment over offering to fix something for Lance for free (as if Lance hadn’t already offered however-much-he-could-eat to him), Lance found himself grinning. Somehow, someway, he was managing to make Keith feel a similar way to him. A way that had him offering things to him that he was supposed to be making a living off of.

“That’d be awesome,” Lance said genuinely, and then he jerked his head towards Keith’s hand, which was still holding onto the red-stained wooden stick. “You can have another one, you know.”

Lance only got to see Keith’s grin out of the corner of his eye, too busy paying attention as he made a turn, but he appreciated it all the same. Keith didn’t even bother standing up, just leaned around his seat and stretched as far as he could managed towards the freezer. His entire side was on display to Lance like that, and Lance found himself having to swallow down the urge to reach over and run his fingers over his bare skin.

Needless to say, Lance had a much better day after being joined by Keith. He found himself never wanting his route to come to an end, adding random twists and turns that he never normally took in order to keep their drive lengthy, despite this meaning that Keith was able to eat his way through more and more of Lance’s products.

Lance found that Keith seemed to enjoy watching Lance interact with the kids, all of whom were familiar with Lance, chatting away with him excitedly whenever Lance slowed to a stop beside them. Occasionally, a kid would realize that Lance wasn’t alone in the van, and then there’d be a crowd of loud children asking Lance all about Keith while Keith sat gaping and red-faced in the front.

Plus, Lance eventually worked up the courage to call Keith out on his weird popsicle-eating habits, of which Keith claimed was perfectly normal. “Just because your teeth can’t handle doing what they’re supposed to —”

“They’re not supposed to! Popsicles aren’t meant to be bitten!”

“All food’s meant to be bitten!” Keith argued, which was absolutely wrong (uh, ever heard of _soup_?) but still entirely too fun to argue about. Lance was high on spirits and low on gas by the time he was done with his route, and he turned to Keith and asked where he lived.

“You don’t have to drop me off,” Keith insisted, crossing his arms stubbornly.

“Uh, yeah I do,” Lance disagreed. “It’s only polite.”

“I ate like ten of your popsicles,” Keith pointed out.

“You’re gonna fix my radio.”

“But I haven’t yet.”

“But you _will_.”

“Lance — you seriously don’t have to go out of your way —”

“I don’t mind,” Lance stubbornly insisted, and with that, he was driving to the other side of town at Keith’s grumpy direction, pulling up in front of a little apartment that Keith apparently shared with Shiro.

“Thanks for keeping me company today,” Lance said, grinning over at Keith who only glared in response.

“Oh, no,” he said sternly, standing up in order to look down at Lance and crossing his arms. “You’re coming in. Shiro made dinner.”

“I don’t want to impose —”

“It’s only fair after you drove me all the way home,” Keith said, and Lance got the strangest feeling that somehow, they were competing. He couldn’t tell who was winning, or how winning would actually be accomplished, but Lance turned off the truck anyway, climbing out of it and letting Keith lead the way.

“Shiro!” Keith called after unlocking the door. He kicked his shoes off in the entryway and Lance copied him, albeit more neatly. “I’m home!”

“Hungry?” Shiro called back, as Lance glanced around curiously. There were pictures on the walls and a table in the entryway, complete with a centerpiece. It was strange — he’d seen Shiro, had spoken to Shiro a million times, but he’d never seen or spoken to him outside his auto-shop. Now, he was in his house, having spent the day with his brother.

“Yeah,” Keith called back. He took off down the hall, Lance following automatically. “Lance is here, by the way.”

There was a long pause, finally followed up with, “ _Lance_  Lance? Like, ice cream truck Lance?”

“The one and only,” Lance chirped, popping his head into the kitchen after Keith, who came to a stop and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.

“I told him he could come in for dinner,” Keith said. He was wearing that grumpy look on his face again, which almost seemed to be his default, although he’d definitely softened during his day spent with Lance. There’d been a few occasions where he’d _giggled_ , and Lance had had to concentrate with every nerve in his being in order to not swerve into a tree and kill them both at the adorable sound.

Shiro was looking between the two of them, his expression lingering on Keith much more than Lance, this weird glint in his eye. He seemed to be communicating with Keith silently, somehow. Keith’s cheeks were oddly pink.

“You’re not here for an after-hours fix-up, are you?” Shiro joked, turning to Lance with a smirk. It was weird to see him out of his uniform, Lance realized, his hands and face clean, dressed in a comfortable t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He was holding a spatula in his prosthetic hand.

“Nope, Blue’s in perfect working order,” Lance said happily, grinning over at Keith as he did. “I guess she must like Keith, ‘cause she hasn’t even stalled or anything since he fixed her up.”

Keith was blushing more, now, though Lance couldn’t be entirely sure why. “Huh,” Shiro said. “That’s strange. Did you actually upgrade to better parts, for a change?”

“Nah,” Lance laughed. “You know I never do. Can’t afford that junk.”

“Strange,” Shiro repeated, shaking his head. “It’s almost like you have better parts anyway.” Beside Lance, Keith shifted uncomfortably, crossing his arms.

“Right?!” Lance laughed. “Anyway, I’m gonna count my blessings while I have ‘em. Keith joined me on my route, today. Honestly, he did me a favor, but he thinks he’s in my debt.”

“I seriously ate like, half a box of popsicles,” Keith said stubbornly.

Shiro laughed, shaking his head at his brother as he did. “Dinner’s almost ready,” he informed, gesturing them into the kitchen with a flick of his spatula. “Come set the table and we’ll be ready to eat.”

—

“Lance, I think you’re being a little unreasonable,” Pidge said, sitting with her hands folded in her lap across from Lance. Lance, who’d just spilled his heart to his two best friends about how he’d finally found the love of his life after enjoying an amazing dinner with Keith and Shiro, thought Pidge was being a little insensitive.

“I think you’re being a little insensitive,” Lance said, crossing his arms and glaring at Pidge, then Hunk, then Pidge again. “Hunk? Buddy? You don’t agree with Pidge, do you?”

“I just think that _maybe_ … you’re moving a little fast,” Hunk said.

Lance leapt to his feet. “Et tu, Brute!?” he cried, hands raised in the air.

“Please sit down,” said Hunk.

“Never! You doubt my love!”

“Lance, seriously, you just met the guy,” Pidge said.

“Yeah,” Lance said. “In my _truck_. The truck of love! The ice cream truck _of love_!”

“Just because your _abuelo_  met your _abuela_  in that truck doesn’t mean —”

Lance screeched, slapping his hands over his ears and clenching his eyes shut. “Don’t ruin my life, Pidge!” he yelled. “Don’t ruin it!” He peeked one eye open, assuring himself that Pidge wasn’t speaking and trying to ruin his life, and lowered his arms back to his sides. “Seriously, you guys,” he said. “You don’t understand how great he is.”

“He drove around with you and ate your popsicles,” Pidge said with a shrug. “You can’t possibly be in love with him already.”

“You’re taking this too literally,” Lance huffed. “I’m just saying that he’s cute. And funny. And the way he eats popsicles is atrocious and I want to date him anyway."

“We just don’t want you to get hurt,” Hunk said. “I mean, you remember with girl with the fudgesicle.”

“We do _not_  speak of the girl with the fudgesicle!”

“Right, sorry.”

“Anyway, I’m gonna ask him out,” Lance informed, staring at his friends stubbornly.

“You got his number, then?” Pidge asked.

Lance’s mouth dropped open. He’d spent the day with him. And then he’d gone over and had dinner with him. And he’d made him laugh and smile and in return Lance had felt scarily warm and light inside. All of that — and he’d forgotten to ask for his damn number.

“Fuck,” Lance said, and Pidge burst out cackling. Dammit! He’d been too excited, having had such a wonderful time with Keith, that he’d forgotten to even ask for his number! He’d rushed right over here instead to tell Hunk and Pidge.

“What are you gonna do?” Pidge asked through giggles. “Drive back over to his house?”

“No!” Lance said indignantly, because he seriously couldn’t do that, that’d just be so weird.

Resigned, Lance realized that, once again, he was going to have to lie in wait for his truck to break down. A truck that was running much, much too smoothly, for no apparent reason. Maybe he’d get lucky again and happen to see Keith walking along the sidewalk again.

If anyone happened to see Lance’s famous ice cream truck traveling down the same stretch of road downtown over and over again throughout the next few days, well, no one said anything. And Keith didn’t happen to be walking along there either.

—

“Tom’s Towing Company, this is Jared, how can we help you?”

“Jared!” Lance exclaimed, letting out a laugh. “Haha, heeyyy…”

“Tow your own damn car, Lance.”

“Jared! That is no way to speak to a customer,” Lance scoffed. “Besides, my car didn’t even break down this time.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious! I just ran out of gas. I totally forgot I was on empty and didn’t fill up.”

“How have you gotten this far in life?” Jared demanded.

“Luck plays a big part in it,” Lance said after some thought. “Seriously, how long until you can get a car to me?”

“It’ll be about half an hour, Lance,” Jared said, sounding tired. “All our tow trucks are out right now. We don’t just keep one on hand for you, you know?”

Lance groaned. “Repeat customers should get benefits.”

“Repeat customers should get _new cars_.”

Lance opened his mouth to respond, to repeat that his truck hadn’t even broken down this time, but an engine revved loudly behind him, and Lance’s felt himself trip to the side in surprise as a motorcycle squealed to a stop beside him.

He stood there, gaping, as the motorist ripped off his helmet and shook his long, black hair out of his face.

“ _Keith_?” Lance said incredulously, finding it very difficult to return his jaw to the place it belonged. Here he’d been, spending the last few days desperately looking for Keith, and it was Keith who’d found _him_.

Lance’s phone, now hanging by his side in his hand, lay forgotten as Jared attempted to get his attention, his repetitions of Lance’s name lost in Lance’s distraction and the low rumble of Keith’s motorcycle.

“Hey, Lance,” said Keith, sounding totally cool and nonchalant despite the fact that he’d just shown up out of nowhere like an avenging angel. On a _motorcycle_. Seriously, did he know how hot that was!?

“What are you doing here?” Lance asked, still stunned and finding it difficult to compute anything, really.

“I saw you pulled over and figured you’d broken down again,” Keith said. “It’s kind of hard to miss your giant blue truck.”

“Isn’t she a beaut’?” Lance sighed happily, reaching out to pat the side of his ice cream truck happily. “And actually, I’m just out of gas. Whatever voodoo you pulled is still holding up, thank God.”

Keith’s cheeks went pink, but he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to his bike. “If you’re just out of gas, I can take you to the gas station. We can get a refill canister.”

“Yes, that’s be amazing!” Lance exclaimed, and all at once he remembered Jared on the phone, eyes widening as he lifted it back to his ear. “Shit! Jared, you still there?”

“Yes,” Jared droned.

“Awesome. Scratch that need for a tow truck — I’m all good now.”

“How the hell did you... You know what? I don’t even wanna know.”

“Bye!” Lance said cheerily, and he hung up and shoved his phone in his pocket, taking a step towards Keith. “You’re a total life saver, dude,” he said, sighing happily.

Keith just shrugged, though his lips were pulled up at the corners, as if he couldn’t really keep his trademarked bored expression in place. “Just get on,” he said, and Lance felt his breath escape from his lungs. He looked at Keith’s motorcycle, which he would be getting on. Keith’s motorcycle, which would be going fast and zipping through lanes and having none of those convenient things that cars did, like seatbelts and airbags and _walls_.

“All right,” Lance said, his voice pitched a bit higher. “Yeah I’ll just — go ahead and... get on that. The motorcycle. I’ll get on the motorcycle.”

Keith couldn’t tamp down his amused smirk, his eyes glinting as they traced over Lance’s nervous frame.

“You can wear my helmet,” he said, still smirking. Without waiting for Lance to answer, he stepped forward and shoved it onto his head, wiggling it left and right to make sure it was sitting properly. He patted the helmet twice, the sound amplified through the plastic, and turned around to stride towards his motorcycle.

Lance felt himself stumbling after him after his brain booted back on, his heart thumping hard in his chest as the helmet bobbed with his jogging steps. Keith straddled the bike expertly, coming to rest comfortably on the seat with his hands on the handlebars, and Lance awkwardly climbed on after him, scooting forward and wrapping his arms around him tentatively.

Keith revved the engine once, and before they’d even started moving, Lance gasped and held Keith tighter. Keith laughed, and then he was shooting off into the traffic, cars and road blurring past them as he took streets way past their speed limit.

His body was warm against Lance’s, his stomach firm and tight under Lance’s hands. By the time they reached the gas station, Lance was feeling giddy and light-headed, and he yanked Keith’s helmet off his head at they made their way towards the gas station.

Catching a glimpse of Lance, Keith laughed, his hand coming up to fix Lance’s hair where it’d apparently been messed up by his helmet. Lance froze as Keith’s fingers touched his hair, the nerves on his scalp suddenly on high alert, his entire body seeming to burst into goose-bumps.

Lance felt so high on adrenaline that he had a hard time paying attention in the gas station, and he didn’t even realize that Keith had paid for the gas canister until they were outside the building and heading towards the pumps, at which point Lance exclaimed, “Hey!” seemingly out of context.

He glared at Keith while filling up the can, angry because Keith had turned down his offer to pay him back for it, and he shoved the helmet back onto his own head before they left. Keith sat astride the motorcycle with the canister on his lap, and Lance held onto it with his arms around Keith for the ride back to his truck.

“Thanks again,” Lance said when they pulled up beside Blue, hopping off in order to pop the side compartment open and start filling the truck up with gas.

“It was no problem,” Keith assured him, having followed Lance off the bike, ending up standing next to him.

“I’m gonna get you a popsicle,” Lance said, the second the canister was empty, and Keith started shaking his head.

“Seriously, you don’t have to —”

“You’re getting one!” Lance jumped into the truck and started rifling through the freezer — damn, he was almost out of the red ones.

“I can’t eat and drive at the same time,” Keith tried to protest, still standing outside the truck, and Lance scoffed.

“You’ll be done with it in three bites anyway.” He held up a red popsicle triumphantly, hopping out of the truck in order to present it to Keith, who took it grudgingly.

It was only after Keith was sitting astride his bike once again, sucking the last chunk of the popsicle off the stick, that Lance’s predicament over the last few days returned to him. He jumped into action, racing the few steps forward as he dug his phone out of his pocket.

“Hey, Keith, wait!” he yelled, despite the fact that Keith’s motorcycle wasn’t even on yet and he could hear Lance perfectly clearly. Lance, red-faced more out of premature embarrassment than exertion, held his phone out to Keith. “Um. I was wondering if I could have your number? You know, in case I… need it?”

Keith laughed, but he took Lance’s phone and typed in his number anyway. In the moment, Lance felt panicked, afraid he was being too forward after someone who only considered him a friend had taken the time out of their day to do something nice for him. But afterwards, as he climbed back into his truck, Keith having driven away with a suspicious red tint to his cheeks, he found that Keith had put a heart emoji beside his name in his phone.

—

Months later, Lance sat with one foot up on the seat as he idled in front of Keith’s apartment, head bent down as he played a game on his phone, waiting. He looked up when the door opened, though, and he automatically leaned over after Keith had settled into the passenger seat, pressing a kiss to his lips.

“How was work?” Keith asked, a bit breathless after running down the stairs. His hair was still wet from a shower, curling around his face and dripping onto his shoulders.

“Oh, fantastic,” Lance said. “You know, I think Aaron has a cavity ‘cause of me.” Keith laughed and Lance grinned, returning his foot to the ground where it belonged as he pulled away, headed back to his own apartment for the night. There, wine, popcorn, and a movie awaited him and his boyfriend.

“Did Hunk end up joining you after all?”

“Only after I bribed him with ice cream,” Lance said. “Speaking of —” Lance leaned back in his seat after coming to a stop at a stop sign, stretching to open the closest freezer and pulling out a blue popsicle, which he handed to Keith. “Here,” he said. “I’m all out of red, at the moment.”

“That’s okay,” Keith said, opening it and popping the treat into his mouth. He sucked on it, for once, letting the popsicle lavish on his tongue instead of demolishing it in three bites. “Blue’s my favorite anyway.”

Lance, who’d only just started to press down on the gas and continue his leisurely drive home, found himself slamming on the breaks and turning to face Keith so quickly something in his neck cracked. “ _What_?!” he exclaimed.

Keith was staring at him with slightly widened eyes. “What?”

“I — _you’ve been eating the red ones this whole time_!”

“Well, yeah!” Keith said, defensive. “That’s the color you offered me, that first day. I figured red ones sold the least, or something. And you kept giving them to me after that, so.”

Lance was gaping, his throat trying desperately to form some kind of appropriate sentence to the actual madness he was hearing. He’d been dating Keith for months now, the two of them having grown impossible close and comfortable around each other, and _still_  Keith had thought that Lance was just feeding him red popsicles as a last resort? He had to know that he was worth more to Lance than low-selling summer treats!

“Keith!” Lance finally said, or more like screeched. “You’ve been eating red fucking popsicles this whole time for _no reason_?!”

“I still enjoy them!” Keith hastened to say. “They’re just not as good.”

Lance dropped his head forward against the steering wheel, a low honk sounding as he did. “I can’t believe you,” he muttered. He felt like his whole world had been flipped upside down. Sharks swam in the sky, trees grew on the moon, and Keith’s favorite flavor popsicle was _blue_. “Next you’ll tell me it wasn’t really you who fixed Blue up this good.”

Keith laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, pulling the popsicle out of his mouth in order to do so. An unbitten Keith popsicle. It sounded insane. “I just used better parts than you paid for.”

“No you did not,” Lance said lowly, who was already having a hard enough time not imploding from this conversation already.

“Yeah,” said Keith. “You offered me free popsicles and I thought you were cute and I snuck some better parts onto your truck.”

Lance was sitting there with his mouth hanging open, his entire world tilting on its axis. And then affection burst forth inside him. A giddy laugh escaped, the result of knowing he’d managed to get his car extra fixed up simply by offering a popsicle. And by being _cute_.

“I love you,” Lance said with a laugh, leaning over lightning-fast to press a kiss against Keith’s cheek, and then he was finally driving again, little giggles escaping him every so often.

“I love you too,” Keith muttered, still a bit shy when saying it. Lance dropped a hand on Keith’s knee as he drove, Keith’s hand coming down to rest on top of it, intertwining their fingers.

Lance didn’t say anything, instead letting the silence between them be filled by his now working radio. It played softly, the music drifting out the windows, the air outside started to grow chilly as the sun sank below the horizon. Lance would have to put away his truck soon, the warm months coming to an end, but maybe he’d work at the garage with Keith or something until it grew warm again.

He glanced over at Keith, who was staring out the window and singing along to the radio softly, making a smile curl up Lance’s lips. “ _‘Cause I don’t care too much for money, and money can’t buy me love…_ ”


End file.
